an epic Saturday

It's been a long long day.

My last shift for the week started  Friday night spilling over into Saturday early morning. I replaced someone in a call so I had to look for another station not yet halfway into the shift. Before I could go back to my self-designated station (no station ownership in our account), somebody had taken over so I had to look for a new station to use. So I was in a relatively new environment; therefore, was not so calm in processing calls, but made it through. I also found out the results of my 2nd monitoring by the QA staff. Two perfect scores in a row now. Lately, I think I've really gotten the hang of relay. Most of the time, my speaking pace is just right and I don't panic too often when facing unusual situations during calls. So far, no instances of tardiness yet for this month so my stats are all good. And I did manage to find a redeeming sight for the night, however brief or late it was.

Then Maan, having been denied a birthday leave, was present  and treated us teammates to some yummy chicken, pasta and pizza breakfast after our shift. Not everyone in the team was present due to prior commitments, so there was plenty of food still left after first servings. I was really full of delicious food afterwards. Pepperoni pizza craving, check!

Picture taken by TL Rogie, edited by me. Maan, bday girl, is at rightmost

So my initial plan to zoom straight to the bus station was thwarted but it's okay, since there was a lot of story-sharing over the food we shared. When we were ready to go home, we were confronted by lines of people crossing streets and intersections. Apparently, they were already in line for Willie Revillame's show which will be taking place at the Araneta Coliseum, so we had to take longer paths than normal to get to our destinations. The lines snaked all the way to one side of Farmers Plaza going to EDSA and the other snaked all the way through McDo and then the other along Puregold going to Aurora Blvd.

When I got to the station, an air-conditioned bus was getting ready to leave. I promptly boarded it, but there were no more seats. Since I needed to get home already, I took the offer to sit in the middle aisle on small plastic chairs. This particular bus had its first drop off at Marquee Mall in Angeles, Pampanga where I was finally able to transfer to a regular seat. And the whole time, I was fast asleep. I also missed the next stop in Tarlac. But I was awake long enough to appreciate the sight of agricultural life in Tarlac, before transitioning into the semi-urban landscape of Rosales and Villasis in Pangasinan. I didn't see much of the way after that. We haven't even arrived at Urdaneta before I fell asleep again. And next thing I knew, the bus was already parked in the terminal, there were no other people inside the bus except me and the music still playing. So the trip was shorter than usual, taking only 5 hours given that this was a day trip.

We had pancit and goto for lunch. Then I started washing some laundry I brought home to ready them for the coming week. I also had a good conversation going with my mom with Karen interjecting in between. We talked about kids and how she mentioned that she and Dad would like to have a kid in the house, meaning grandkids and not adopted ones or another one of their own, how the Mislang females seem to be destined to be spinsters and about finding the right person to be with for a long long while. I also asked her about possible assets they could pass on and preparations for those if ever the need arose.

When I was almost done, they cooked fishballs. We ate them in the "garden area" where I also had orange black tea while Dad had coffee and Karen had hot chocolate with bananas. Then RJ said he needed to fill the gas on his motorcycle. I asked him if we could go to the beach and he agreed. The sun was still pretty high up so I was confident I could still catch the sunset and the pretty colors that go along with it.

We went straight to the so-called Japanese garden in Tondaligan beach. It was still lacking many elements to be called an authentic Japanese garden. There was a Japanese style alcove and a marker about the Japanese people who contributed to build the area. Also on the left part of the horizon, the sun was already starting to set. Playing with different exposures and light and aperture settings on the digicam, I had plenty of shots of the faraway sun  interspersed with silhouettes of the coconut trees whose leaves were swaying strongly with the strong wind. Then RJ and I went down to the beach. There were a number of people swimming, many of whom were kids. The wind was making waves crash every so often on the shore. Oh how I miss swimming in the beach. Hopefully, I get to do that next weekend. I was able to see the sun so quickly change colors to red and disappear behind the mountains and then finally leave the horizon.

Eventually, it became darker but there was an amazing reverse pyramid strip of blue sky down the orange and reddish glow cast by the setting sun.

When there were no more opportunities to take pictures and some serious talking was done with, RJ and I decided to go home. This is only my second time to ride a motorbike and as a passenger too. I was a bit nervous when we started the ride to the beach but I eventually got comfy. On the way back, I could see the stars in the sky. The speed RJ was driving on allowed me to savor a relatively cool and unpolluted air. I felt really close to nature after spending some time at the beach and now, this ride back under the open sky. In the distance, we could also see streaks of lightning appearing in different spots. There was one particularly humongous cloud whose back was being lit by lightning, but because of its size, we only saw the flickerings of light on the back of the cloud. It was refreshing for me to be riding through the streets from Bonuan to Arellano in the open air and being able to gaze at the wonders of the sky.

Then I mentioned the De Venecia highway and RJ suggested we go there. When we got to the point where we were supposed to turn back, he suggested we go to the City Mall which is at the end of this highway. So I agreed. We just walked for awhile, reaching the atrium. Then I decided to go into NBS to take a look at what type of postcards were on sale there. And I would say it was pretty serendipitous that we went in there because the branch doesn't only sell the new line of the Philippine Postcards brand which I see in bookstores here in Metro Manila. They also have stocks of pretty old postcards printed by the same company. But they were a bit more varied. Not everything had gorgeous pictures though, but at least, they had a feeling of authenticity to me. So off I went picking up some 11 old pieces. I was getting ready to pay for P150 or more for all of them when the cashier started ringing them in, and most of them were at P1.50 each. Some were at P3.24 or P4.25. The two P12 postcards I bought were the newly printed ones. So now, I have enough cards for the UNESCO Swap over at World in Postcards. I ought to go back there tomorrow and buy more stocks of the same cards for future uses and also for my own copies.